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A White Man Shot 7 People of Color at San Diego Pool Party - And The President Couldn't Care Less

By Shaun King - May 1, 2017

Some things never change, 2017 be damned. Nearly 54 years after Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, we still live in a nation where African-Americans are repeatedly targeted and killed in this country for nothing more than the color of their skin.

This is what happened in 2015 when white supremacist Dylann Roof walked into a Charleston church, sat through an entire Bible study, then shot and killed the pastor and eight other wonderful leaders of the historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.

This is what happened more than a month ago on the streets of Manhattan when a white supremacist, James Harris Jackson, took a bus from Maryland, with the sole purpose of targeting and killing black men. He then stabbed 66-year-old Timothy Caughman to death just for the hell of it, authorities said.

One witness said that Selis actually smirkedas he fired his gun until it was empty. He then reloaded it and began firing it again, hitting person after person after person — including a man celebrating his 50th birthday at near-point-blank range, police said.

The shooter died at the scene, but by that point the damage was already done.

Police said Monday that they believe race was not a factor in the shooting — but when African-Americans are shot and killed like this, it not only impacts the direct victims of the attack, it has a terrifying impact on African-Americans and people of color throughout that community and around the country.

And if we aren't willing to admit the role that race and religion play in all of this, we are fooling ourselves.
If Peter Selis was a Muslim, Trump would've already tweeted about this by now.
If Peter Selis was an immigrant or a refugee, Sean Spicer would've held an early press conference on this and Trump would've gone on a bigoted tweetstorm about needing money to build the wall.
If Peter Selis was black, the conservative trope about black-on-black crime would be yelled from the rooftops from coast to coast.

But none of that is the case. Instead, we have a good old fashioned white man, reportedly with a beer in one hand and a loaded gun in the other, randomly shooting people of color.

So, Trump says nothing. No hotlines are being created to report racist white men. No executive orders are being signed to protect people from the scourge of white supremacy.

And at least one reason Trump is not speaking out on the violence of white supremacy in this country is because they are among his most devoted supporters. Right there on the floor level of Trump's rally in Pennsylvania this weekend were reportedly members of a hate group. They weren't in disguise. They had their gear on and were looking as menacing as ever.

They should've never been let into the event in the first place. This isn't candidate Trump. It was bad enough when white supremacists and Neo-Nazis attended Trump campaign rally after campaign rally, but now they are on the floor of events hosted by the President of the United States of America. It's despicable.

And so here we are — with victims of yet another mass shooting in America left to put all the broken pieces back together again, and the elected leader of our nation seeming like he couldn't care less because the victims and the shooter don't quite match the racial and religious profile of Trump's bigoted worldview.

Muslims are asked to condemn Islamist terrorism – should the mainstream right do the same when the attackers are white?

06.23.2017

Following the attack on a Finsbury Park mosque, both Theresa May and Amber Rudd have issued statements and delivered speeches adopting hard lines against Islamophobia and right-wing extremism. May has gone so far as stating that Islamophobia itself is a form of extremism.

These pronouncements have drawn positive responses from prominent members of the Muslim community such as Miqdaad Versi of the Muslim Council of Britain. But it is important to question whether or not this change in rhetoric signifies a genuine change in government policy.

On the face of it, there are reasons for tentative optimism. The seriousness with which politicians took the Finsbury Park attack is a significant change. On this, the government is ahead of the media. While other terrorism attacks have been condemned as unjustifiable violence, some newspapers framed the Finsbury Park attack as a "revenge".

In fact, radicalisation is not a one-off event, but takes place in a web of institutional, social and ideological conditions. Furthermore this ignores a much longer story about the drip, drip, drip of Islamophobic or anti-Muslim discourse which permeates British society.

The government has played a part in legitimising this anti-Muslim sentiment. Let’s not forget that Prevent has, since its inception, disproportionately targeted Muslims. The impression of an "us and them" mentality is only underlined by its secrecy. Moreover, the Prevent agenda has conflated a variety of other social policy concerns relating to gender equality, sexual violence, and unemployment as "extremism" issues. For example, Amber Rudd herself suggested that Islamophobia would decline if grooming stopped, which can not only be seen as victim-blaming, but further contributes to stereotyping Muslims as the enemy within.

So are promises to get serious about Islamophobia more empty words from the Prime Minister?

The Muslim community has been told many times to fight terrorism from within, but will there be a similar response to far right extremism? The ongoing rhetorical attacks on multiculturalism, and the longstanding association of Islamist radicalisation with a lack of integration, rather than religiously inspired political violence, make it difficult to see how real change will happen.

This would require deep soul-searching, followed by serious changes in public debates about policies relating to both immigration and extremism. Until that happens, May’s words on Islamophobia will be nothing more than political PR.

May continues to lobby for increased executive powers to fight terrorism, which she has done since her time as home secretary. The policy on right-wing extremism is likely to follow that of Islamic extremism: it will focus only on ideology and it will ignore the wider context of structural racism and white privilege.

Ask yourselves, will white men ever be stopped and searched to the same extent as brown men? Will white women be seen as easy targets for violent attacks as Muslim women disproportionately are? Will far right extremists fear for their citizenship status?

And does the solution to extremism, in any form, truly lie in further oppressive legislation and more government power? We also need to be aware that powers extended to address extremism are likely to continue to have a disproportionate effect on minorities.

As long as there is no change in government policy, the status quo will continue to reinforce the same divisive narrative which is the bread and butter of every extremist group. After the Queen’s Speech, we continue to see no evidence of any serious attempt to reform policy and seriously address far right extremism. May’s empty words after the Finsbury Park attack represent nothing more than an opportunistic political move from a weakened Prime Minister who is desperate for approval – and for power.

White supremacists are targeting Muslims. It's time we call them terrorists

"I’m going to be scarred for life. I’m emotionally wrecked."

2017-07-03

In recent months, Europe has seen several attacks that were confirmed to be terrorist hate crimes.

Last week, London police announced that an acid attack on two Muslim cousins in London is being treated as a hate crime.

Jameel Muhktar and Resham Khan were attacked with acid while out celebrating Khan's 21st birthday, as they were sitting in a car at traffic lights in east London.

While the attack was confirmed to be unprovoked, no reference to the ethnicity or religion of the perpetrator - who appears to be white - has been made on prominent news outlets and police initially ruled out a religious or racial motive for the crime.

The attack left Muhktar and Khan with "life-changing injuries", The Guardian reports, with Khan's career plans as an aspiring model in jeopardy.

Mukhtar, 37, told Channel 4 News that a man they did not know knocked on the car window and sprayed the toxic substance, leaving the two in excruciating pain that Mukhtar describes as "like somebody's ironing me 24/7".

Mukhtar was initially put in an induced coma and Khan underwent skin grafts. Both suffer from critical burns to the face and body.

"I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m going to be scarred for life. I’m emotionally wrecked. I'm in continuous pain," he said.

"We're innocent people. We didn’t deserve that. I’ve never seen this guy in my life. I don’t have any problems with anybody.

My cousin is 21. She’s a business student. Why would anyone do that to us?"

Authorities are still on the hunt for the suspected attacker, who has been identified as 24-year-old John Tomlin. Police had initially eliminated religious or racial bigotry from the suspected motive behind the crime.

However, police announced on Friday that new evidence suggests otherwise and that they will investigate the assault as a hate crime, according to The Guardian.

Mukhtar believes that they were targeted because of their religion and said that "it’s definitely a hate crime" that has "something to do with Islamophobia".

The 21-year-old business student and aspiring model was due to start her new job this week and she has been called in for a job interview that she will not be able to attend.

With her severe visible injuries, her career in modeling might be at risk. "I'm devastated. I keep wondering if my life will ever be the same," Khan wrote on Twitter.

Khan and Mukhtar both pointed out the double standards in the way the public deals with terror attacks. Khan noted that if the roles were reversed and a Muslim attacked white people, it would be "all over the news" and "the whole country knows it would be classed as a terror attack".

When it comes to international media and public perception, the focus is most often shed on terrorists when they are Muslim. Many are quick to highlight a terrorist's religion when he is Muslim, yet are hesitant to call a non-Muslim a terrorist. In reality, however, Muslims are falling victim to terror attacks fueled by Islamophobia.

Gunmen opened fire outside a mosque in southeast France on Sunday night, injuring eight people, including a seven-year-old girl.

Worshippers were leaving the mosque when at least two "hooded men" attacked them, but authorities are not treating it as a terror attack.

"From what we know this evening, the mosque was not targeted. The fact that it happened in the street of the religious establishment was unconnected with it," the prosecutor said, according to The Telegraph.

Muslim worshippers in London were targeted after Ramadan prayers last month

In May, a pregnant Muslim woman lost her baby after being kicked in the stomach

A 49-year old man from Keighley has been sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to explosives and terrorism offences.

Martin Panton of Parkwood Street, Keighley, pleaded guilty to six offences under Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 (possessing a record containing information useful for terrorist purposes) and four offences under Section 4 of the Explosive Substances Act 1883 (possessing and making an explosive substance).

He was arrested by officers from the North East Counter Terrorism Unit in September 2016 after the discovery of explosive material at his home address.

At the time of his arrest local residents were evacuated to allow for thorough searches and the safe removal of explosive material.

“Unlawful possession of highly volatile chemicals and explosives is not only extremely dangerous but is also a serious criminal offence. The materials were being held in a well-populated residential area and the consequences of them being ignited, either accidentally or deliberately could have been tragic. Thankfully the items were removed safely."

– Detective Chief Superintendent Clive Wain, Head of the North East Counter Terrorism Unit

Comments:
"White male jailed for explosives and terrorism offences given 4yrs. 4 Muslim lads last week got life sentences despite shambolic trial in which police fabricated evidence and blatantly lied, produced no fingerprints, no cctv, no forensics and no witnesses linking the accused to the weapons they "discovered" despite being under surveillance for weeks.
And, if you can believe it, one juror who attempted to match-make between another juror and a police officer involved in allegedly planting evidence was removed by the judge. The juror who actually fancied the policeman in question remained on the jury and helped convict all the accused."
- Moazzam Begg

Looking at both plots and attacks carried out, the group tracked 201 terrorist incidents on U.S. soil from January 2008 to the end of 2016. The database shows 115 cases by right-wing extremists ― from white supremacists to militias to “sovereign citizens” ― compared to 63 cases by Islamist extremists. Incidents from left-wing extremists, which include ecoterrorists and animal rights militants, were comparatively rare, with 19 incidents.

While the database makes a point of distinguishing between different groups within right-wing extremism, lead reporter David Neiwert told HuffPost that “those are all gradations of white supremacy, variations on the same thing.” When it comes to right-wing extremism, attackers are also “mostly men” and “almost purely white,” Neiwert said.

Attacks by right-wing extremists were also more often deadly, with nearly a third of right-wing extremist incidents resulting in deaths compared with 13 percent of Islamist extremist cases resulting in deaths. However, the sheer number of people killed by Islamist extremists ― a total of 90 people killed ― was higher than the death toll at the hands of right-wing extremists ― 79 people killed.

“As with a lot of things related to Trump and the Islamophobic right, the reality is viewed through an upside-down looking glass,” Neiwert said. “The reality is the most significant domestic terror threat we have is right-wing extremism.”

The Investigative Fund’s findings reflect those of previous studies of domestic terrorism. The New America Foundation, for instance, which has been tracking deadly terror incidents on U.S. soil since the Sept. 11 attacks, also finds an almost two-to-one ratio of attacks by far-right extremists to Islamist extremists, with 21 deadly attacks by far-right extremists, compared to 11 by Islamist extremists.

“I think the larger perception in the public ― and this includes many progressives and liberals ― is the inversion of the reality: that the greatest threat we face is Islamist radicals,” Neiwert said. “And it’s reflected in the way the press report upon various kinds of domestic terror attacks: When it’s a white domestic terrorist, they underplay it, write it off to mental illness.”

“There’s actually a debate over whether what Dylann Roof did was domestic terrorism, when it so plainly is domestic terrorism,” Neiwert told HuffPost. “A lot of this has to do with embedded judgements about where these threats come from ― and that has to do with fear-mongering around Islamophobia.”

The solution, according to Neiwert, lies with the government first acknowledging the scale of the problem of far-right extremism, and then dedicating resources to fighting it.

So far Trump has shown a clear double standard in his response to terrorism: After Islamist extremists attacked London on June 3, for instance, Trump condemned the violence on Twitter the same day ― but after an attack in Portland, Oregon, by a white supremacist on May 26, Trump waited more than two days before tweeting about it. After the London attack, Trump also called on the courts to reinstate his travel ban on certain Muslim-majority countries ― which was roundly criticized. After the Portland attack, Trump made no calls to change policy to prevent future attacks.

The Trump administration also reportedly just dropped funding for nonprofit Life After Hate, a group that helps people leave the white supremacist movement.

But it’s not just Trump that’s the problem. The Fund’s database goes back to 2008 and shows clearly how government resources have been disproportionately dedicated to tackling Islamist extremism over right-wing extremism. The government succeeded in interrupting the vast majority of Islamist extremist terror cases since 2008, for instance: 76 percent of incidents tracked were “foiled plots,” which the group noted showed “a significant investment of law enforcement resources.” When it came to right-wing extremism, only about a third of incidents were interrupted ― 35 percent ― and the majority of the cases included acts of violence that led to deaths, injuries or damaged property.

At the end of the day, it’s not only on the government to acknowledge the reality of the growing threat of far-right extremism, according to Neiwert, it’s on everyone from members of the media to average Americans.

“First thing we need to do is recognize that it’s there, it’s a problem, it’s a threat ― as great a threat as Islamists,” Neiwert said. “And it needs to be taken seriously.”

When Mother Jones reporter Shane Bauer signed up to train with a militia group in California last spring, he came equipped with woodland camo, combat boots, and a semi-automatic rifle. On a mountainside outside the San Francisco Bay Area, he joined other similarly armed recruits. Over the course of several trainings, they learned about marksmanship, land navigation, patrolling, rappelling, radio communication, and code language. They also learned how to hold defensive positions and set up bases.

The group Bauer joined was the California State Militia (CSM), which describes itself as a collection of “concerned citizen soldiers” seeking to defend America from all enemies, foreign and domestic. CSM doesn’t conceal its activities; it shares photos of its trainings on Facebook. In March, CSM’s Bravo Company posted snapshots of camo-clad militia members gathered in the woods, setting up camp and aiming their rifles among the towering pines. “We had fun, built stronger relationships and ate great,” one member wrote on the Facebook page.

These military-style trainings have no connection to the US military or a government-sponsored militia. Yet they are legal so long as they don’t cross the line into inciting violence or civil unrest. Under California law, it is illegal for a “paramilitary organization” to train with weapons if it engages in “instruction or training in guerrilla warfare or sabotage.” Violators are subject to one year of imprisonment and/or a fine of up to $1,000. When I asked the California attorney general’s office if there was any reason to believe that CSM’s activities might violate state law, a spokeswoman said the office was unable to provide any legal analysis and declined to comment further.

Nationwide, 41 states have laws that place restrictions on private paramilitary activity. The laws fall into two categories: those that limit or regulate private military groups and those that limit or regulate private military training. The penalties vary. In Idaho, training people in ways to maim or kill with the intent to further “civil disorder” is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and/or up to a $50,000 fine. In Pennsylvania, training people to use guns or bombs with intent to further civil disorder is a first-degree misdemeanor. Arizona law forbids anyone besides the government from maintaining “troops under arms”; doing so is a class 5 felony—a minor crime comparable to improperly storing used tires.

Anti-Paramilitary Laws

In addition to joining a California militia, Bauer participated in a “border op” partly organized by the Arizona and Colorado chapters of the Three Percent United Patriots (3UP), which operates under a military-style command structure. Among the operation’s participants were members of the Borderkeepers of Alabama. I contacted five district attorneys and four attorneys general in California, Arizona, Colorado, and Alabama to ask about the legality of militia activity in their jurisdictions. All the DA and AG offices I reached out to either declined to comment or said there wasn’t enough information to determine whether the militia groups in their area were operating legally. The only exception was the district attorney’s office inLarimer County, Colorado, which said there was “no reason to believe that 3UP is in violation” of the state’s anti-paramilitary training law.

Some anti-paramilitary laws have been around since the Reconstruction Era, when they were intended to prevent the reemergence of Confederate armies. Many have their roots in the 1980s, when hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan began running training camps. The Anti-Defamation League, which monitors extremist activity, was so alarmed by these reports that it drew up model anti-paramilitary legislation, andover the next decade, 24 states passed restrictions on paramilitary activity. The new ordinances were enforced against white supremacists in a few scattered cases.

In the 1990s, self-styled citizen militia groups proliferated across the country, marking the beginning of the modern right-wing militia movement. Officials hesitated to use the laws to crack down on militia activity. Even in Michigan—then a hotbed of militia activity—the attorney general’s office declined to take a position on whether the Michigan Militia was in violation of state law. To date, there are no known cases of these laws being used against “patriot” militias, according to Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow with the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. “They’ve become sort of forgotten little laws,” he says.

When militia members are accused of breaking the law, prosecutors ignore anti-paramilitary laws and pursue more serious charges. In 2014, hundreds of armed militiamen gathered at Cliven Bundy’s ranch in Nevada to protest the confiscation of his cattle as a result of his failure to pay more than $1 million in unpaid federal grazing fees. Some aimed their guns at federal authorities and ultimately forced the Bureau of Land Management to release the cattle. Afterward, the federal government slapped the showdown’s leaders, including Bundy, with a slew of federal charges, including conspiracy, extortion, obstruction of justice, and assault on a federal officer. Earlier this month, after a lengthy undercover FBI investigation, three militiamen in Kansas were arrested for plotting to bomb a Somali apartment complex. They were charged with conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction.

State anti-paramilitary laws are often ignored because they have few teeth, says Pitcavage. “You can take a case federal with conspiracy laws and get much more time and potentially much harsher penalties than with most of the state laws,” he says. “In some of these cases, the feds don’t even give the state the option. They come in and they just charge these guys with conspiracy and there’s no need for the state to try and apply a paramilitary training statute.”

Even as militia members talk of the day when they might put their training to the test to resist the government, the decision not to scrutinize militia activity more closely may be a strategic one: Prosecutors and law enforcement agencies don’t want to risk angering militia supporters and generating more support for the militia movement. “For the most part,” says Pitcavage, “if these militias are just running around the woods with guns, most states don’t really care.”

Oregon “Militia” Says Feds Stole Their Land – Turns Out It Was Stolen from Paiute Tribe

Ammon Bundy, a leader in the group of Oregon “militiamen” who have occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters, didn’t always hate the federal government. According to Russ Choma at Mother Jones, Bundy’s business, Valet Fleet Services LLC, borrowed $530,000 through a federal loan guarantee program for small businesses.

Choma writes that Bundy’s Phoenix-based company specializes in “repairing and maintaining fleets of semitrucks throughout Arizona” and that the government subsidy had an estimated cost of $22,419 at taxpayers’ expense.

But that’s not the only way that Bundy and his fellow militiamen benefit from the federal government. A closer look at the very land that’s under dispute reveals a not-too-distant past where the United States didn’t possess the land at all.

The federal government seized this land from the Northern Paiute tribe, whose federal trust land has shrunk over time to a mere 760 acres in Burns, Oregon, where the militiamen’s occupation began.

According to Steve Russell at Indian Country Today Media Network, President Grant established the Malheur Indian Reservation in 1872, and it wasn’t until the Bannock War of 1878 that the Bannocks and the Paiute were removed from the reservation. Since then, the wildlife refuge has existed as an alternative use of federal land.

In other words, the only reason the militiamen feel they have a leg to stand on when it comes sovereignty over this land is because of the federal government they are attacking.

When you consider the plight of the Paiute, it makes Ammon Bundy’s Facebook post on December 30th — in which he complained about the federal government stealing land — look deeply ironic:

“Simply put, the federal government has adversely stolen the lands and resources from the people, destroyed thousands of jobs, and the economy of an entire county. Now anyone who has enough guts to stand against them, they annihilate through their own court systems…”

Like Bundy, Native Americans have also occupied federal government buildings as a means of protest. Notably, their occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C., in 1972. The discrepancy in treatment, however, was glaring. Twenty-four of the protestors were arrested for trespassing. The Ogala Lakota also famously occupied the town of Wounded Knee in 1973. The very first day of the occupation, the U.S. government called in armed reinforcements, including FBI agents.

Native Americans are still battling for the return of their stolen lands today. The San Carlos Apache tribe, for example, is fighting in Arizona to save Oak Flat, which includes Apache Leap, a sacred site, from being mined after a land swap was slipped into the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act.

It’s probably safe to assume that the plight of the Paiute and the history of the land now called the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge isn’t on Ammon Bundy’s mind. The militiamen probably don’t see the irony in claiming that the feds stole their land.

Even if the land “belonged” entirely to them, it would still be stolen.

In looking at photographs and video of the happenings in Virginia, you would think you’ve gone back in time to the Civil Rights era. They are clear indications that racism, anti-Semitism, sexism ― pure, unfiltered hatred ― is still thriving in America in 2017.

If you’re thinking, “It’s not that bad,” then you’re not paying attention. Let the photos speak for themselves. This is the world we live in and we must do better:

Neo-Nazis, alt-right members, and white supremacists encircle and chant at counter-protesters at the base of a statue of Thomas Jefferson after marching through the University of Virginia campus with torches in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Aug. 11, 2017.

Neo-Nazis, alt-right members, and white supremacists take part a the night before the ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, white supremacists march with tiki torches through the University of Virginia campus.

Neo-Nazis, alt-right members, and white supremacists march through the University of Virginia Campus with torches in Charlottesville, Va., USA on Aug. 11, 2017.

Members of white nationalists march in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S., Aug. 12, 2017.

A sign on a business in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia.

A man is down during a clash between members of white nationalist protests and a group of counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S., Aug. 12, 2017.

Members of white nationalists clash against a group of counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S., Aug. 12, 2017.

A protester receives first-aid during a clash between members of white nationalists against a group of counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S., Aug. 12, 2017.

A man makes a slashing motion across his throat toward counter-protesters as he marches with other white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the ‘alt-right’ during the ‘Unite the Right’ rally Aug. 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. After clashes with anti-fascist protesters and police the rally was declared an unlawful gathering and people were forced out of Lee Park, where a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee is slated to be removed.

Hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the ‘alt-right’ march down East Market Street toward Lee Park during the ‘Unite the Right’ rally Aug. 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. After clashes with anti-fascist protesters and police the rally was declared an unlawful gathering and people were forced out of Lee Park, where a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee is slated to be removed.

A smoke bomb is thrown at a group of counter-protesters during a clash against members of white nationalist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S., Aug. 12, 2017.

Anti-fascist counter-protesters wait outside Lee Park to hurl insults as white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the ‘alt-right’ are forced out after the ‘Unite the Right’ rally was declared an unlawful gathering August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. After clashes with anti-fascist protesters and police the rally was declared an unlawful gathering and people were forced out of Lee Park, where a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee is slated to be removed.

A group of counter-protesters rally against members of white nationalists in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S., Aug. 12, 2017.

Day of violent clashes left three people dead during largest gathering of white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, skinheads and members of the Ku Klux Klan in a decade

A driver [white extremist terrorist] accused of deliberately ramming his car into anti-racism protestors at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, has been arrested and charged with second-degree murder.

"Our message is plain and simple: Go home. You are not wanted in this great commonwealth. Shame on you. You pretend that you're patriots, but you are anything but a patriot.

"You came here today to hurt people. And you did hurt people. But my message is clear: We are stronger than you."

At least 41 people were treated for injuries in hospital following violent clashes between white supremacists and anti-fascists at the rally protesting against the removal of a statue to a Confederate general in the city.

A police helicopter also crashed, killing the two officers on board.
A state of emergency was announced by the local and state governments with police declaring the "Unite the Right" rally an unlawful assembly and ordering the crowds to disperse. The state police were deployed, with riot police and the National Guard waiting in the wings.

Some of the far-right group members were seen carrying assault rifles and wearing paramilitary clothing, while others had large shields, helmets and gas masks in apparent anticipation of violence ahead of the demonstration against plans to take down the statue to General Robert E Lee from a local park.

Graphic footage shows the moment Mr Fields Jr allegedly rammed his car into a group of people before reversing and hitting more people.

Medics carried the injured, bloodied and crying, away as a police tank rolled down the street.

Earlier the two groups of protesters were involved in violent clashes with pepper spray — used, reportedly, by both sides — filling the air, according to local media reports. Bottles were also thrown and a number of fist fights broke out.

Hospital officials said 26 were injured as a result of the car crash and 15 others from the fighting in the streets. Some were said to have life-threatening injuries.

Charlottesville Mayor Michael Signer, who confirmed one person had been killed, said he was disappointed the white nationalists had descended on his town and blamed Donald Trump for inflaming racial prejudices with his campaign last year.

"I'm not going to make any bones about it. I place the blame for a lot of what you're seeing in America today right at the doorstep of the White House and the people around the President," he said.

Mr Trump put out a tweet condemning "violence" and "hate" - although he did not specify that he was talking about the white supremacists, attracting criticism on Twitter. He later blamed hatred "on many sides" for the violence, prompting a furious backlash from some leading Republicans.

The clash was the latest in a series of confrontations after Charlottesville, situated about 100 miles from Washington DC, voted to remove the statue of General Lee.
Celebrating the Confederate cause is a highly inflammatory issue in the US because the southern states supported slavery.

In May, a torch-wielding group that included prominent white nationalist Richard Spencer gathered around the statue for a night-time protest, and in July, about 50 members of a North Carolina-based KKK group travelled there for a rally, where they were met by hundreds of counter-protesters.

Charlottesville is normally a quiet university city, and many of those protesting are believed to be from out of town.

The so-called “Unite The Right” rally organized by white nationalist Jason Kessler in Charlottesville, Virginia, has succeeded in drawing out a diversity of far-right groups ranging from white nationalists to armed “Patriot” groups.

What follows is a guide to some of the flags and symbols as spotted by Hatewatch analysts:

The above is a poster for the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally derived from Benjamin Franklin’s famous “Join, or Die” cartoon.

The “national flag of Kekistan” mimics a German Nazi war flag, with the Kek logo replacing the swastika and the green replacing the infamous German red. A 4chan logo is emblazoned in the upper left hand corner. Alt-righters are particularly fond of the way the banner trolls liberals who recognize its origins.

Fascist/National Socialist Flags

Roman Legion Flag: Flag depicting an eagle holding a fasces standing inside of a laurel wreath. Each of these symbols have been adopted by various elements of the far right.

Schwarze Sonne (Black Sun), somes called the sonnerad: symbol has become synonymous with myriad far-right groups who traffic in neo-Nazi and/or neo-Volkisch ideologies.

Schwarze Sonne (Black Sun), somes called the sonnerad: symbol has become synonymous with myriad far-right groups who traffic in neo-Nazi and/or neo-Volkisch ideologies. The symbol is based on the ancient sun wheel artifacts that were made and used by Norse and Germanic tribes as symbol of their pagan beliefs. Those sun wheels, made centuries upon centuries ago, do not usually resemble the complexity of this particular version. The version above is inlayed into the marble floor of the Castle Wewelsburg, the castle that Himmler made the spiritual and literal home of the SS during the reign of the Third Reich, and has significance within the occult practices of the SS.

National Socialist Movement—oldest and most likely largest NS group in USA. Run by Jeff Schoep.

Traditionalist Youth Network/Traditionalist Worker Party shirt.

Traditionalist Worker Party

The Traditionalist Worker Party is a white nationalist group that advocates for racially pure nations and communities and blames Jews for many of the world’s problems. Even as it claims to oppose racism, saying every race deserves its own lands and culture, the group is intimately allied with neo-Nazi and other hardline racist organizations that espouse unvarnished white supremacist views.

Neo-Confederate Flags

“Southern Nationalist” Flag:

“Southern Nationalist” Flag

Designed by a former member of the Neo-Confederate League of the South (LOS), the "Southern Nationalist" flag is intended to evoke the St. Andrews Cross and the Confederate Battle Flag (CBF). Frequently carried by members of LOS and their allies in the south. A frequent variation features the flag combined with a CBF:

Identity Dixie Flag.

A variation of the neo-Confederate “Southern Nationalist” flag featuring a magnolia flower, the symbol of The Right Stuff’s southern offshoot Identity Dixie.Anti-Communist Action

"Anti-Communist Action"

A group whose name is an inversion of Anti-Racist Action (ARA), the first and historically largest (at one time) decentralized network of anti-racist and anti-fascist dedicated to confronting the far-right and disrupting their events and rallies through direct action, including violence.The black and yellow colors refer to libertarianism, typically depicted on web forums under a black and yellow banner. Variations of the flag often feature helicopters dropping a figure from the sky, a reference to Augusto Pinochet’s brutal tactics of suppressing dissent.Identitarian

Identity Evropa flags.

Based on the model of European Identitarian groups, Nathan Benjamin Damigolaunched Identity Evropa from his grandparents’ compound in Oakdale, California. Identity Evropa focuses on recruiting college-aged, white students in order to discuss “race realism” and white interests, targeting disaffected young men by branding itself as a fraternity and social club.

American Guard is a group of hardcore nationalists (with aging/former racist skinheads and at least one klansman among its members) dedicated to physically opposing leftists at events and rallies. Augustus Invictus and Brien James are leaders within various state chapters. Some group members have connections to the Proud Boys and to the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights, the Proud Boys “military division.”

Charlottesville: Man in white supremacist rally disowned by family after he 'turned into a crazy Nazi'

Peter Tefft 'is a maniac, who has turned away from all of us and gone down some insane internet rabbit hole'

A man who marched in the white supremacy rally in Charlottesville has been disowned by his family.

Peter Tefft of Fargo, North Dakota, “is a maniac, who has turned away from all of us and gone down some insane internet rabbit-hole, and turned into a crazy nazi,” said his nephew, Jacob Scott, in a statement to a local television station.

On Saturday, Charlottesville became embroiled in violence when white nationals, who were protesting against the removal of a Confederate statue, clashed with counter-demonstrators.

“[Peter] scares us all, we don’t feel safe around him, and we don’t know how he came to be this way,” Mr Scott continued. “My grandfather feels especially grieved, as though he has failed as a father.”

In February, Mr Tefft told a reporter in Fargo he was “100 per cent pro-white.”

Mr Tefft’s father said he and the rest of the family are entirely against his son’s racist beliefs.

In a letter published on Monday in The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, Pearce Tefft wrote that he and other family members “wish to loudly repudiate” his son’s “vile, hateful and racist rhetoric and actions.”

“We do not know specifically where he learned these beliefs,” Mr Pearce Tefft wrote. “He did not learn them at home.”

In the letter, the father said he has taught his children that “all men and women are created equal” and that “we must love each other all the same.”

“Evidently Peter has chosen to unlearn these lessons, much to my and his family’s heartbreak and distress,” he wrote.

“We have been silent up until now, but now we see that this was a mistake,” the elder Tefft continued. “It was the silence of good people that allowed the Nazis to flourish the first time around, and it is the silence of good people that is allowing them to flourish now.”

He said Peter is no longer welcome at family gatherings.

“I pray my prodigal son will renounce his hateful beliefs and return home. Then and only then will I lay out the feast,” he said.

Last weekend in Charlottesville, a rally organized by "Unite the Right" gathered at UVA to protest the planned removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. The demonstration devolved into violence over the weekend, and a woman named Heather Heyer was killed when a car drove into a crowd of counter-protesters.

UVA isn't the only place that's been talking about getting rid of all these statues dedicated to the losers of the American Civil War. A statue was removed in Gainesville, one in Hollywood, and there's a planned removal in Lexington.

The New York Timesreports that the city of Baltimore seems to have decided to get rid of their Confederate statues too, and they weren't gonna deal with any KKK members showing up. In the middle of the night, they took them all away, and it's one of the first things I've smiled about in this situation all week:

Good.

What a lot of people don't necessarily realize is that many of these statues are more kitsch than ceremonious marker of fallen soldiers. Most were put up many decades after the war in the early 1900s by the Daughters of the Confederacy and other Southern groups who wanted to commemorate the "War of Northern Aggression." These plaques and statues are everywhere, not just in main squares, and right now there's a way of people quietly removing them:

You can see how cheap that thing is when it comes down! That statue was removed by protesters in Durham, North Carolina. One woman named Taqiyah Thompson was arrested, accused of climbing a ladder and attaching a rope to the statue, and was charged with two felonies. Thompson doesn't regret her actions.

“I did the right thing," she told reporters, "Everyone who was there—the people did the right thing. The people will continue to keep making the right choices until every Confederate statue is gone, until white supremacy is gone. That statue is where it belongs. It needs to be in the garbage.

“The people decided to take matters into our own hands and remove the statue,” Thompson continued.“We are tired of waiting on politicians who could have voted to remove the white supremacist statues years ago, but they failed to act. So we acted.”

The removal of these statues may be largely symbolic, but their placement has been a symbol of something very wrong for a very long time.

Illinois Senate passes measure calling for neo-Nazis to be classified as terror groups

By Robin Eberhardt - 08/14/17

The Illinois Senate on Sunday approved a resolution calling for police to categorize neo-Nazi groups as terrorist organizations, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The measure came as a response to Saturday's violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., during which one person died and scores more were injured.

“It is vital that we stand in total opposition to the hatred, bigotry and violence displayed by the white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups in Charlottesville this past weekend,” said state Sen. Don Harmon (D), who sponsored the measure.

“They are the heirs to the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis. We fought two bloody wars in opposition to their ideologies. We must continue to fight those same twisted ideologies today,” he added.

Heather Heyer, 32, was killed when a man with reported ties to the white supremacist movement drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters in Charlottesville. The alleged driver, James Alex Fields Jr., 20, has been charged with second-degree murder in the crash.

The leader of a North Carolina based group associated with the Ku Klux Klan says he is glad that a woman died while taking part in a protest in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend.

Heather Heyer was killed when James Allen Fields Jr. allegedly drove a car into a crowd of protesters at high speed, then fled the scene by backing up. Nineteen other people were injured.

Fields was among a group of white nationalists protesting the removal of a Confederate statue in a Charlottesville park. Heyer was among the large number of counter-protesters last Saturday.

Monday night, Justin Moore, the Grand Dragon for the Loyal White Knights of Ku Klux Klan, said he was glad Heyer died in the attack.

“I’m sorta glad that them people got hit and I’m glad that girl died,” Moore said in a voicemail to WBTV. “They were a bunch of Communists out there protesting against somebody’s freedom of speech, so it doesn’t bother me that they got hurt at all.”

“I think we’re going to see more stuff like this happening at white nationalist events,” Moore warned.

The Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is based in Pelham. Members of the group were in Charlottesville as a part of the demonstration.

Neo-Nazis concerned after anti-fascist vigilantes name and shame them on social media

White supremacists involved in the Charlottesville violence are reportedly “terrified” about being publicly exposed, in case they lose their jobs or receive abuse online.

On Monday it emerged anti-fascist vigilantes were naming and shaming white supremacists on social media, after clashes between the two sides overwhelmed the city over the weekend.

“If you recognise any of the Nazis marching in Charlottesville, send me their names/profiles and I'll make them famous,” one Twitter user requested.

The rally was the largest congregation of white nationalist groups in over a decade and saw brawls between people holding KKK banners and confederate flags and groups of anti-fascist protesters.

Following the campaign, a man was fired from his job at a hot dog restaurant in Berkeley and another has allegedly been disowned by his family over his involvement in the violence.

“That's them trying to embolden their supporters or bring more people into the fold who would otherwise be casual observers or just stay away, because they're afraid of the consequences of being involved. The truth is, they're terrified.”

Hundreds of photos of white supremacists appeared online in the wake of the violence. Most of the nationalists are known to use pseudonyms and masking techniques to conceal their identities online, but the photographs have made this problematic.

One forum user, who identified himself as a white supremacist, conceded that the thought of being outed and losing his job was a “horrifying prospect”.

"The difference between Charlottesville and other public events is that the organisers were saying 'Do not come to this event without the expectation of being doxxed,'" Mr Hankes added.

"They had some inkling [that they could be outed] given the furore in the weeks leading up to the event, where you saw things ramp up between some of the anti-fascist groups and some of the alt-righters online."

Mr Hankes also confirmed that alt-right supporters had been known to doxx each other in the past. “It is a group of malignant contrarians so they’re constantly bickering with each other,” he said.

On Tuesday President Donald Trump defended his response to the racially-charged protests, attacking what he called the "alt-left" and saying blame should be shared by both sides.

More than 30 people were injured and a 32-year-old woman died when a car allegedly driven by a white nationalist ploughed into a crowd of counter-protesters.

Over the past week, the 18-year-old, who is originally from Illinois, said he had received 15 death threats over social media and also by email.

He blamed what he described as the socialist bias of US states for the animosity towards him.

“Massachusetts, and Boston in particular, are among the most left-wing states and cities,” he said. “Probably anywhere I would go would be safer than Boston.”

Mr Fuentes said his reason for attending the Charlottesville rally was to demonstrate against immigration, multiculturalism and post-modernism. At the protest, attended by neo-Nazis, there were chants of “Jews will not replace us.”

On the day of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, he posted on Facebook that “a tidal wave of white identity is coming.”

At the demonstration, 32-year-old civil rights activist Heather Heyer was killed when a car ploughed into a group of people protesting at the demonstration. Mr Fuentes has blamed her death on the “normalisation of violence on the left.”

In a Chicago Tribune report, the 18-year-old said he was not a racist and did not condone violence.
Boston University confirmed that Mr Fuentes was no longer a student there.

Mr Fuentes said he planned to enroll at Auburn University in Alabama.

"I really like the architecture and some of the programmes there," he said. "I think I will happy there and I will be safe. It's solidly red territory."

On a conservative Alabama talk radio, the previous US president was implicit in the violence that erupted in Charlottesville.

“I think Barack Obama is to blame. I think this country is more divided than it ever has been. I think almost all racism in world history can be tied back to liberalism, socialism, the idea everyone's supposed to have an equal outcome as opposed to equal opportunity,” said Kerrick Whisenant on 101.1 FM Yellowhammer News, cited by Vox.

On his Facebook page, Mr Fuentes proclaimed his fervent support of President Donald Trump and his belief that “multiculturalism is a cancer.”

He has also called for journalists to be kicked out of the United States or hanged for what he believes are fake news reports.

----------------------------------
This Chilling Charlottesville Doc Should Be Required Viewing for all Americans

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Tina Fey to white supremacists: 'It's not our country, we stole it from the Native Americans'

The 30 Rock star was a surprise visitor on SNL spin-off Weekend Update and gave her thoughts on Charlottesville and Trump’s response

Tina Fey was a surprise visitor on Saturday Night Live spin-off Weekend Update on Thursday and gave her thoughts on white supremacy and Donald Trump.

The 30 Rock star is a graduate of the University of Virginia, and arrived to express her anger at what occurred last weekend in Charlottesville.

“I’m feeling sick because I’ve seen Raiders of the Lost Ark and I wasn’t confused by it,” she said. “Nazis are always bad, I don’t care what you say.”

There have been reports of further white supremacist rallies across the US this weekend, including in Washington Square Park in New York. “Part of me hopes these neo-Nazis do try it in New York City,” she said. “I hope they try it and get the ham salad kicked out of them by a bunch of drag queens, because you know what a drag queen still is? A six foot four black man.”

Fey’s strategy for dealing with the stress of it all? “Find a local business you support, maybe a Jewish-run bakery or an African American-run bakery, order a cake with the American flag on it and just eat it,” she said, before bringing on a giant sheet cake which she proceeded to eat.

She said “the next time you see a bunch of white boys in polo shirts screaming about taking our country back and you want to scream it’s not our country, we stole it from the Native Americans” – you should scream into the cake instead.

“Who drove the car into the crowd?” she joked. “Hillary’s emails?”

As she continued to eat cake, she spoke about the importance of stress eating. “Sheet-caking is a grassroots movement,” she said. “Most of the women I know have been doing it once a week since the election.”

She went on to question why Paul Ryan hasn’t been more vocal during Trump’s refusal to condemn those marching against the removal of confederate statues.

“Where is Paul Ryan in all this?” she said. “You’re supposed to be the cool young congressman but you don’t know how to @ somebody on Twitter? Racism is bad @RealDonaldTrump, you pussy.”

She also questioned Trump’s sudden passion for the statutes set to be taken down.

“Donny Johnny says we need to defend out country’s beautiful confederate monuments, when you know he would take them down in a second if he thought he could build a bunch of poorly constructed condos on the spot,” she said.

After dipping a grilled cheese sandwich into her cake, she concluded: “I really want to say, to encourage, all good, sane Americans this weekend to treat these rallies like the opening of a thoughtful movie with two female leads.

In November 2016, the writer and TED speaker Siyanda Mohutsiwa tweeted a ground-breaking observation. “When we talk about online radicalisation we always talk about Muslims. But the radicalisation of white men online is at astronomical levels,” she wrote, inspiring a series of mainstream articles on the topic (“We need to talk about the online radicalisation of young, white men,” wrote Abi Wilkinson in The Guardian). It is now commonly accepted that online radicalisation is not limited to the work of Isis, which uses social media to spread propaganda and recruit new members. Young, white men frequently form alt-right and neo-Nazi beliefs online.

But this narrative, too, is missing something. When it comes to online radicalisation into extreme right-wing, white supremacist, or racist views, women are far from immune.

“It’s a really slow process to be brainwashed really,” says Alexandra*, a 22-year-old former-racist who adopted extreme views during the United States presidential election of 2016. In particular, she believed white people to be more intelligent than people of colour. “It definitely felt like being indoctrinated into a cult.”

Alexandra was “indoctrinated” on 4Chan, the imageboard site where openly racist views flourish, especially on boards such as /pol/. It is a common misconception that 4Chan is only used by loser, basement-dwelling men. In actuality, 4Chan’s official figures acknowledge 30 percent of its users are female. More women may frequent 4Chan and /pol/ than it first appears, as many do not announce their gender on the site because of its “Tits or GTFO” culture. Even when women do reveal themselves, they are often believed to be men who are lying for attention.

“There are actually a lot of females on 4chan, they just don't really say. Most of the time it just isn't relevant,” says Alexandra. Her experiences on the site are similar to male users who are radicalised by /pol/’s far-right rhetoric. “They sowed the seeds of doubt with memes,” she laughs apprehensively. “Dumb memes and stuff and jokes…

“[Then] I was shown really bullshit studies that stated that some races were inferior to others like… I know now that that’s bogus science, it was bad statistics, but I never bothered to actually look into the truth myself, I just believed what was told to me.”

“You’d think that it would never happen to you, that you would never hold such horrible views," says Alexandra. "But it just happened really slowly and I didn't even notice it until too late."

***

We are less inclined to talk about radical alt-right and neo-Nazi women because they are less inclined to carry out radical acts. Photographs that emerged from the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville this weekend revealed that it was mostly polo shirt-wearing young, white men picking up tiki torches, shouting racial slurs, and fighting with counter-protestors. The white supremacist and alt-right terror attacks of the last year have also been committed by men, not women. But just because women aren’t as visible doesn’t mean they are not culpable.

“Even when people are alt-right or sympathisers with Isis, it’s a tiny percentage of people who are willing or eager to die for those reasons and those people typically have significant personal problems and mental health issues, or suicidal motives,” explains Adam Lankford, author of The Myth of Martyrdom: What Really Drives Suicide Bombers, Rampage Shooters, and Other Self-Destructive Killers.

“Both men and women can play a huge role in terms of shaping the radicalised rhetoric that then influences those rare people who commit a crime.”

Prominent alt-right women often publicly admit that their role is more behind-the-scenes. Ayla Stewart runs the blog Wife With a Purpose, where she writes about “white culture” and traditional values. She was scheduled to speak at the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally before dropping out due to safety concerns. In a blog post entitled “#Charlottesville May Have Redefined Women’s Roles in the Alt Right”, she writes:

“I’ve decided that the growth of the movement has necessitated that I pick and choose my involvement as a woman more carefully and that I’m more mindful to chose [sic] women’s roles only.”

These roles include public speaking (only when her husband is present), gaining medical skills, and “listening to our men” in order to provide moral support. Stewart declined to be interviewed for this piece.

It is clear, therefore, that alt-right women do not have to carry out violence to be radical or radicalised. In some cases, they are complicit in the violence that does occur. Lankford gives the example of the Camp Chapman attack, committed by a male Jordanian suicide bomber against a CIA base in Afghanistan.

“What the research suggests in that case was the guy who ultimately committed the suicide bombing may have been less radical than his wife,” he explains. “His wife was actually pushing him to be more radical and shaming him for his lack of courage.”

***

Just because women are less likely to be violent doesn’t mean they are incapable of it.

Angela King is a former neo-Nazi who went to prison for her part in the armed robbery and assault of a Jewish shop owner. She now runs Life After Hate, a non-profit that aims to help former right-wing extremists. While part of a skinhead gang, it was her job to recruit other women to the cause.

“I was well known for the violence I was willing to inflict on others… often times the men would come up to me and say we don’t want to physically hurt a woman so can you take care of this,” King explains. “When I brought other women in I looked for the same qualities in them that I thought I had in myself.”

These traits, King explains, were anger and a previous history of violence. She was 15 when she became involved with neo-Nazis, and explains that struggles with her sexuality and bullying had made her into a violent teenager.

“I was bullied verbally for years. I didn't fit in, I was socially awkward,” she says. One incident in particular stands out. Aged 12, King was physically bullied for the first time.

“I was humiliated in a way that even today I still am humiliated by this experience,” she says. One day, King made the mistake of sitting at a desk that “belonged” to a bully. “She started a fight with me in front of the entire class… I’ve always struggled with weight so I was a little bit pudgy, I had my little training bra on, and during the fight she ripped my shirt open in front of the entire class.

“At that age, having absolutely no self-confidence, I made the decision that if I became the bully, and took her place, I could never be humiliated like that again.”

King’s story is important because when it comes to online radicalisation, the cliché is that bullied, “loser” men are drawn to these alt-right and neo-Nazi communities. The most prominent women in the far-right (such as Stewart, and Lauren Southern, a YouTuber) are traditionally attractive and successful, with long blonde hair and flashing smiles. In actuality, women that are drawn to the movement online might be struggling, like King, to be socially accepted. This in no way justifies or excuses extreme behaviour, but can go some way to explaining how and why certain young women are radicalised.

“At the age of 15 I had been bullied, raped. I had started down a negative path you know, experimenting with drugs, drinking, theft. And I was dealing with what I would call an acute identity crisis and essentially I was a very, very angry young woman who was socially awkward who did not feel like I had a place in the world, that I fit in anywhere. And I had no self-confidence or self-esteem. I hated everything about myself.”

King explains that Life After Hate’s research reveals that there are often non-ideological based precursors that lead people to far right groups. “Individuals don’t go to hate groups because they already hate everyone, they go seeking something. They go to fill some type of void in their lives that they’re not getting.”

None of this, of course, excuses the actions and beliefs of far-right extremists, but it does go some way to explaining how “normal” young people can be radicalised online. I ask Alexandra, the former 4Chan racist, if anything else was going on in her life when she was drawn towards extreme beliefs.
“Yes, I was lonely,” she admits.

***

That lonely men and women can both be radicalised in the insidious corners of the internet shouldn’t be surprising. For years, Isis has recruited vulnerable young women online, with children as young as 15 becoming "jihadi brides". We have now acknowledged that the cliché of virginal, spotty men being driven to far-right hate excludes the college-educated, clean-cut white men who made up much of the Unite the Right rally last weekend. We now must realise that right-wing women, too, are radicalised online, and they, too, are culpable for radical acts.

It is often assumed that extremist women are radicalised by their husbands or fathers, which is aided by statements by far-right women themselves. The YouTuber, Southern, for example, once said:

“Anytime they [the left] talk about the alt-right, they make it sound like it’s just about a bunch of guys in basements. They don’t mention that these guys have wives – supportive wives, who go to these meet-ups and these conferences – who are there – so I think it’s great for right-wing women to show themselves. We are here. You’re wrong.”

Although there is truth in this statement, women don’t have to have far-right husbands, brothers, or fathers in order to be drawn to white supremacist or alt-right movements. Although it doesn’t seem the alt-right are actively preying on young white women the same way they prey on young white men, many women are involved in online spaces that we wrongly assume are male-only. There are other spaces, such as Reddit's r/Hawtschwitz, where men and women upload semi-nude or naked pictures of neo-Nazi women, carving a specific space for women in the online far-right.

When we speak of women radicalised by husbands and fathers, we misallocate blame. Alexandra deeply regrets her choices, but she accepts they were her own. “I’m not going to deny that what I did was bad because I have to take responsibility for my actions,” she says.

Alexandra, who was “historically left-wing”, was first drawn to 4Chan when she became frustrated with the “self-righteousness” of the website Tumblr, favoured by liberal teens. Although she frequented the site's board for talking about anime, /a/, not /pol/, she found neo-Nazi and white supremacist beliefs were spread there too.

“I was just like really fed up with the far left,” she says, “There was a lot of stuff I didn't like, like blaming males for everything.” From this, Alexandra became anti-feminist and this is how she was incrementally exposed to anti-Semitic and racist beliefs. This parallels the story of many radicalised males on 4Chan, who turn to the site from hatred of feminists or indeed, all women.

“What I was doing was racist, like I – deep down I didn't really fully believe it in my heart, but the seeds of doubt were sowed again and it was a way to fit in. Like, if you don't regurgitate their opinions exactly they’ll just bully you and run you off.”

King’s life changed in prison, where Jamaican inmates befriended her and she was forced to reassess her worldview. Alexandra now considers herself “basically” free from prejudices, but says trying to rid herself of extreme beliefs is like “detoxing from drugs”. She began questioning 4Chan when she first realised that they genuinely wanted Donald Trump to become president. “I thought that supporting Trump was just a dumb meme on the internet,” she says.

Nowadays, King dedicates her life to helping young people escape from far-right extremism. "Those of us who were involved a few decades ago we did not have this type of technology, cell phones were not the slim white phones we have today, they were giant boxes," she says. "With the younger individuals who contact us who grew up with this technology, we're definitely seeing people who initially stumbled across the violent far-right online and the same holds for men and women.
"Instead of having to be out in public in a giant rally or Klan meeting, individuals find hate online."

Far-right protesters have hung death’s-head images from the doors of an Islamic primary school in Leiden as children returned from the summer holiday.

Teachers arriving at the IBS Er-Risèlèh school on Monday found a bicycle lock had been put on the doors of the building and a note referring to terrorist attacks in Europe. ‘We need to tackle the problem by the roots,’ it said.

The school said it had reported the incident to the police. ‘We have tried to keep it from our pupils, but they could see that they couldn’t get into the bicycle sheds,’ a spokeswoman told Omroep West.

‘We’re deeply shocked by this. You don’t know what’s going on in people’s heads. A lot of our colleagues feel unsafe and we haven’t seen any police checking the area.’

Pegida Nederland posted pictures on Twitter of the incident, which it described as a ‘protest action’ carried out by ‘people from Leiden’.

Man [White Christian Terrorist Suspect] arrested by FBI agents after allegedly planning to bomb building in downtown Oklahoma City

OKLAHOMA CITY - Federal officials say that a 23-year-old Oklahoma man has been arrested after allegedly planning to blow up a bomb in downtown Oklahoma City.

According to a criminal complaint, the FBI arrested 23-year-old Jerry Drake Varnell at 1 a.m. on Aug. 12 after he allegedly attempted to detonate what he believed to be an explosives-laden van he had parked in an alley next to BancFirst in downtown Oklahoma City.

The complaint alleges that Varnell initially wanted to blow up the Federal Reserve Building in Washington, D.C. with a device that was similar to the one used in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Court documents claim that Varnell was upset with the government, and his plans got the attention of law enforcement.

An undercover FBI agent posed as a person who could help him with the bombing.

According to the complaint, Varnell identified BancFirst as the target, helped assemble the device, loaded it into a van and drove it to the alley by the bank.

In fact, officials say that Varnell even dialed a number on a cell phone that he believed would trigger the explosion. Authorities say they also found a statement that he planned to post to social media after the explosion.

However, officials say that the device was actually inert and the public was not in any danger.

“There was never a concern that our community’s safety or security was at risk during this investigation,” said Kathryn Peterson, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI in Oklahoma. “I can assure the public, without hesitation, that we had Varnell’s actions monitored every step of the way.”

Varnell is charged with attempting to use explosives to destroy a building in interstate commerce.

“I commend the devoted work of the FBI and our state law enforcement partners in ensuring that violent plots of this kind never succeed,” said Mark A. Yancey, United States Attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma.

If convicted, he would face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison.

He is expected to make his initial appearance in an Oklahoma City courtroom on Monday around 3 p.m.

BancFirst released the following statement after Varnell's arrest:

"BancFirst has been working cooperatively with the FBI. At no time were employees, customers or the general public ever in any danger. We believe our BancFirst downtown Oklahoma City building was a random and convenient selection by the suspect. There is no further threat or reason for concern. We take comfort and our company embraces a deep appreciation and admiration for the men and women of the FBI for their diligent and dedicated work in protecting our nation."

U.S. Sen. James Lankford, who served on the Intelligence Committee and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, issued the following statement:

“I applaud the work of the FBI and local law enforcement for investigating and apprehending a man who sought to commit a terrorist act in Oklahoma City. Our intelligence community and law enforcement work every day to protect our neighborhoods from attacks and terror, and they often do it without the public ever knowing. It is chilling to think that a sympathizer of Timothy McVeigh would want to act on hate, as a tribute to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil before September 11. We’re thankful for the concerned citizens that stepped forward to alert authorities about this man. This is another somber reminder that, as a nation, we must remain vigilant about home-grown extremism and radicalization in our communities.”

The white crosses brandished by members of Britain First are seemingly chosen more for the sinister white supremacist imagery than they are for being emblems of Christianity – echoing the Ku Klux Klan insignia and that organisation’s use of burning crosses to signify intimidation and the threat of impending violence.

We weren’t aggressive and we didn’t intimidate anyone … to suggest it’s intimidatory to give out bibles in a Christian country is nonsense. We live in a free country where you’re allowed to try to recruit other people to your religion. Muslims do it all the time … We just went into the mosques, gave out a few bibles and leaflets, talked to some elders and left.

Jesus Christ did use physical violence according to the Gospels in the temple in Jerusalem, and he met a very violent end. He preached love and forgiveness etc, but he also said he didn’t come to bring peace; he came to bring division and a sword, he came to bring fire upon the world to sort the world out.

I think he is fooling himself and lots of people that Britain First is a Christian group. Sadly, it has just become a violent front for people abusing the Bible.

Ignore the racists?

Dowson isn’t the only one to condemn them. Rather awkwardly for a group marketed as a defender of “British and Christian morality”, Britain First has been “denounced by every major Christian denomination in the UK”. Most recently, the Bishop of Wolverhampton, the Rt Revd Clive Gregory, criticised the group:

Britain First’s use of the cross and claim to support Christianity is actually a kind of blasphemy … Jesus’ way is always the path of peace and reconciliation, of self-sacrifice and costly love, and in our contemporary multicultural society that means particularly in our relationships with our neighbours of other faiths including Muslims.

Given Britain First’s underwhelming credentials, then, it’s tempting to agree with William Morgan, who went undercover at a Britain First conference last year and dismissed the group as “a small and nasty far-right group, who just so happen to have a strong social media presence including 1.3m Facebook likes … a racist drinking group, too old and overweight to do anything but intimidate members of the public and lose elections”.

Morgan’s final words of advice following his single experience with the group? “As I have learned, the best way to deal with Britain First is to completely ignore it, see it as a group project and an online message board for the angry and bitter, and move on. Trust me: we have very little to worry about.”

The white crosses brandished by members of Britain First are seemingly chosen more for the sinister white supremacist imagery than they are for being emblems of Christianity – echoing the Ku Klux Klan insignia and that organisation’s use of burning crosses to signify intimidation and the threat of impending violence.

We weren’t aggressive and we didn’t intimidate anyone … to suggest it’s intimidatory to give out bibles in a Christian country is nonsense. We live in a free country where you’re allowed to try to recruit other people to your religion. Muslims do it all the time … We just went into the mosques, gave out a few bibles and leaflets, talked to some elders and left.

Jesus Christ did use physical violence according to the Gospels in the temple in Jerusalem, and he met a very violent end. He preached love and forgiveness etc, but he also said he didn’t come to bring peace; he came to bring division and a sword, he came to bring fire upon the world to sort the world out.

I think he is fooling himself and lots of people that Britain First is a Christian group. Sadly, it has just become a violent front for people abusing the Bible.

Ignore the racists?

Dowson isn’t the only one to condemn them. Rather awkwardly for a group marketed as a defender of “British and Christian morality”, Britain First has been “denounced by every major Christian denomination in the UK”. Most recently, the Bishop of Wolverhampton, the Rt Revd Clive Gregory, criticised the group:

Britain First’s use of the cross and claim to support Christianity is actually a kind of blasphemy … Jesus’ way is always the path of peace and reconciliation, of self-sacrifice and costly love, and in our contemporary multicultural society that means particularly in our relationships with our neighbours of other faiths including Muslims.

Given Britain First’s underwhelming credentials, then, it’s tempting to agree with William Morgan, who went undercover at a Britain First conference last year and dismissed the group as “a small and nasty far-right group, who just so happen to have a strong social media presence including 1.3m Facebook likes … a racist drinking group, too old and overweight to do anything but intimidate members of the public and lose elections”.

Morgan’s final words of advice following his single experience with the group? “As I have learned, the best way to deal with Britain First is to completely ignore it, see it as a group project and an online message board for the angry and bitter, and move on. Trust me: we have very little to worry about.”

Pepe the Frog cartoonist forces withdrawal of 'alt-right' children's book

Matt Furie, whose ‘peaceful frog-dude’ has been co-opted as a far-right meme, has stopped distribution of book that lawyers say espouses Islamophobia

The cartoonist who created Pepe the Frog has taken legal action to force the author of a self-published children’s book that uses the character to espouse “racist, Islamophobic and hate-filled themes” to give all of his profits to a Muslim advocacy organisation.

Pepe, created by Matt Furie in the early 2000s as a “peaceful frog-dude” with the catchphrase “feels good man”, was adopted as a symbol by supporters of the US “alt-right” last year. He has since been designated by the Anti-Defamation League as a hate symbol, but Furie has been attempting to end the association, even killing off the character in one comic strip and subsequently launching a Kickstarter to raise money to “save Pepe”.

“Pepe became a meme around 2010, then stuck around the internet long enough to become an institutionally recognised hate mascot. Needless to say it’s a nightmare so I killed him off. But now I’d like to bring him back, and I’d like to ask your help in funding a new zine celebrating a resurrected Pepe, one that shall shine a light in all this darkness and feel good again,” wrote Furie on the Kickstarter platform, which raised more than $34,000 (£26,000), substantially more than his $10,000 goal.

Furie’s lawyers have also successfully stopped the distribution of Eric Hauser’s children’s book The Adventures of Pepe and Pede. According to the Washington Post, the book sees Pepe and “his best friend Centipede” – centipede is a term for Trump supporters – as they attempt to “bring freedom back to Wishington Farm”, battling an alligator named “Alkah” with buds from “the honesty tree”. Hauser was an assistant principal at a Texas middle school until details of the book became public.

Hauser, who subsequently resigned, told the Dallas Morning News that he had been unaware of Pepe the Frog’s association with the white supremacist movement until he published the book, believing him instead to be a conservative meme. He told the Dallas Observer that the book was was not intended to be racist.

But WilmerHale, the law firm representing Furie, said the book “espoused racist, Islamophobic and hate-filled themes, included allusions to the alt-right movement and was deliberately targeted at children”. The firm said that when Hauser was threatened with litigation he admitted infringement, and agreed to stop distribution of the book in all forms. It is no longer for sale on Amazon.
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“Under US copyright law, Furie is entitled to all of the profits that Hauser made by selling his infringing book. Instead, per the agreement – and at Furie’s insistence – Hauser will be required to give all of his profits to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization,” said WilmerHale.

According to Motherboard, that amounts to $1,521.54. “Furie does not want money made by peddling hateful themes to children,” WilmerHale told the website. “Furie wants one thing to be clear: Pepe the Frog does not belong to the alt-right. As this action shows, Furie will aggressively enforce his intellectual property, using legal action if necessary, to end the misappropriation of Pepe the Frog … He will make sure that no one profits by using Pepe in alt-right propaganda – and particularly not by targeting children.”

Tina Fey to white supremacists: 'It's not our country, we stole it from the Native Americans'

The 30 Rock star was a surprise visitor on SNL spin-off Weekend Update and gave her thoughts on Charlottesville and Trump’s response

Tina Fey was a surprise visitor on Saturday Night Live spin-off Weekend Update on Thursday and gave her thoughts on white supremacy and Donald Trump.

The 30 Rock star is a graduate of the University of Virginia, and arrived to express her anger at what occurred last weekend in Charlottesville.

“I’m feeling sick because I’ve seen Raiders of the Lost Ark and I wasn’t confused by it,” she said. “Nazis are always bad, I don’t care what you say.”

There have been reports of further white supremacist rallies across the US this weekend, including in Washington Square Park in New York. “Part of me hopes these neo-Nazis do try it in New York City,” she said. “I hope they try it and get the ham salad kicked out of them by a bunch of drag queens, because you know what a drag queen still is? A six foot four black man.”

Fey’s strategy for dealing with the stress of it all? “Find a local business you support, maybe a Jewish-run bakery or an African American-run bakery, order a cake with the American flag on it and just eat it,” she said, before bringing on a giant sheet cake which she proceeded to eat.

She said “the next time you see a bunch of white boys in polo shirts screaming about taking our country back and you want to scream it’s not our country, we stole it from the Native Americans” – you should scream into the cake instead.

“Who drove the car into the crowd?” she joked. “Hillary’s emails?”

As she continued to eat cake, she spoke about the importance of stress eating. “Sheet-caking is a grassroots movement,” she said. “Most of the women I know have been doing it once a week since the election.”

She went on to question why Paul Ryan hasn’t been more vocal during Trump’s refusal to condemn those marching against the removal of confederate statues.

“Where is Paul Ryan in all this?” she said. “You’re supposed to be the cool young congressman but you don’t know how to @ somebody on Twitter? Racism is bad @RealDonaldTrump, you pussy.”

She also questioned Trump’s sudden passion for the statues set to be taken down.

“Donny Johnny says we need to defend out country’s beautiful confederate monuments, when you know he would take them down in a second if he thought he could build a bunch of poorly constructed condos on the spot,” she said.

After dipping a grilled cheese sandwich into her cake, she concluded: “I really want to say, to encourage, all good, sane Americans this weekend to treat these rallies like the opening of a thoughtful movie with two female leads.

Since the events of Charlottesville, the country seems more divided than ever. But one 67-year-old women decided to take white supremacists down a peg or two, in a scathing letter of the week spotted by Twitter user Alicia Mayer.

The letter, published in The Salt Lake Tribune and submitted by Jonna Ramey, reads:

"I am a 67-year-old American white woman. My parents enlisted in World War II to fight fascism. They both served; my mother was a nurse, my father navigated bombers. They lost friends in that bloody war so that all the world could be free of fascism. They did not fight so that some white people could claim supremacy or that Nazis could openly walk the streets of America."
"White person to white supremacist person: What is wrong with you?"

"People of Europeanheritage are doing just fine in the world. They run most of the world’s institutions, hold much of the world’s wealth, replicate as frequently as other humans. You’re not in any danger here. The world is changing, that’s true. Others want a piece of the pie. They work for it, strive for it and earn it. Technology (robotics) is having a greater effect on your job prospects than immigrants. Going forward, tackling corporate control and climate change will need all of our attention, ideas and energy. Put down your Tiki torches and trite flags and get involved in some real work."

"By the way, the world won the war against Nazi fascism in the 1940s, just as America won the war against the Confederacy in the 1860s. Aligning with two lost causes just labels you as profound losers."

"And finally, white person to white person: Like my parents before me, I will not stand idly by nor give up my rights or the rights of other Americans because you think you are better than some of us. It doesn’t work that way. All Americans stand shoulder to shoulder against your hatred and bigotry."